Canada COVID-19 Trend

Data Sources:

Data version: 2020-12-28

Canada COVID-19 case growth rate compared to other countries

When aligned by the first day since the 100th case in each country, the total confirmed case number of all the countries grow similarly except for a few: it follows a steep exponential growth at the early stage which is resulted from an unhampered epidemic spread, gradually slows down after various countermeasures are taken by the governments and eventually goes to flat when the situation is under control.

Countries that are successful in the early prevention and control, like Japan and Singapore, show a much shallower growth with time; South Korea experienced a rapid growth at the early stage but managed to flatten out the curve very quick by an aggressive 'trace, test and treat' strategy. However, recently, many countries has experienced a second wave of growth.

Canada case number grows slowly after a huge increase in Spring.

Exponential projection of Canada case growth and the impact of the countermeasures

Since Canada is still at the exponential growth period, an exponential projection provides a good short-term forecast. In the following chart, the next 5 day's case number is projected based on the exponential growth of the previous 5 day's actual case numbers. The different countermeasures taken by the government are timelined on the chart to monitor their impacts on the growth.

After reaching 1000 cases, the growth rate of Canada is actually not very different from the growth rate of many other countries when they had a similar number of cases. The plot below shows the growth curve of Canada vs US, Italy, Korean and China after other countries' dates are backshifted. The trajectories of those countries provide different scenaria on the long term case growth in Canada.

Projected case number in the next 5 days:

Date December 26 December 27 December 28 December 29 December 30 December 31 January 01 January 02
Actual 546,412 551,891 555,207
Projection 544,987 550,560 556,190 561,878 567,623 573,428 579,292 585,215
Daily Adds 9,841 5,479 3,316
Projected Adds 5,517 5,573 5,630 5,688 5,746 5,804 5,864 5,924

Canada daily case increase

COVID-19 cases by province

Long Term Outlook

Three scenarios from CIDRAP 2020